Body + Mind + Spirit

It’s Time to STOP Paying Attention to the Number on the Scale & START Focusing on the Fit of Your Clothes

Weight has come up before in class as a topic of discussion (and as we all know, is unfortunately something that we women often talk and think about), so we wanted to be sure to pass along this image and set things straight. As the picture above shows, this is the difference between 5 pounds of fat and 5 pounds of muscle. Unbelievable, huh?!

Now you can see that pound for pound, muscle takes up less space than fat because it is more dense! It takes up approximately four-fifths as much space as fat, to be exact. So what does this mean for you? It means that even if two people are the exact same height and weight, the person with a higher body fat percentage will wear a larger clothing size.

This is why when you lose fat and gain muscle through exercise, strength training, and replacing many carbohydrates with protein (muscle food), you may not drop loads of pounds on the scale, but you WILL become more lean and a fat burning machine (not to mention healthier overall)! In addition to the less space it takes up, muscle is moremetabolically active than fat, meaning it burns more calories when you are at rest than fat does. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn — period!

So don’t get discouraged if you are not seeing big changes on the scale during an exercise routine. Instead, turn your attention to how your body FEELS and how your CLOTHES FIT and you will see the real, important changes taking place!

And never forget: fat is not your enemy– your body needs it! For optimal health, the best body fat range for women is 18 to 30 percent. For men, it’s 10 to 25 percent.

So what would you rather have… a physically smaller and more taught body (and not to mention BETTER HEALTH)? Or a physically larger body, less dense tissue and the toxic effects that excessive fat has on the body…but a smaller number on the scale? For the sake of your health, we hope that you choose the former!